Public Bitcoin miners sold 32,000 BTC in Q1 2026

Publicly traded Bitcoin miners sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026, exceeding their total sales for all of 2025. The sales occurred in January–March 2026 and were led by large listed operators including Marathon Digital, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, Cango, Core Scientific and Bitdeer.

The 32,000 BTC in Q1 2026 is the largest quarterly selling volume on record for publicly traded miners. The amount is greater than the roughly 20,000 BTC miners sold in Q2 2022. The Q1 liquidations follow a period of falling miner revenue and rising competition.

Hashprice, the daily revenue per petahash per second of computing power, is near $33 per PH/s per day, below a commonly cited breakeven point of about $35 per PH/s per day for many operators. Hashprice has declined since July 2025. At the current level an estimated 20% of miners are operating at a loss, particularly those using older, less efficient machines. At the same time, network hashrate has continued to increase, which raises competition for block rewards.

Miners typically sell portions of their BTC holdings to cover expenses such as electricity, equipment financing and maintenance. A combination of lower Bitcoin prices, higher energy costs and growing mining capacity has prompted some firms to liquidate coins they might otherwise have kept in corporate treasuries. CryptoQuant data show miner-held BTC fell from more than 1.86 million at the end of 2023 to about 1.8 million at the time of publication.

In its Q1 2026 Bitcoin Mining Report, asset manager CoinShares wrote that higher-cost operators could face further forced selling in the near term unless Bitcoin’s price recovers materially. Meanwhile, treasury-focused companies continued to buy during the pullback; Michael Saylor posted the directive “Think bigger” while sharing a chart of his firm’s purchase history.